Many small business owners struggle with digital marketing. Where do you start? How do you begin to acquire customers? And how do you create a cohesive strategy that helps you meet the KPIs of your business?
All of these questions and more pop up when it comes to digital marketing. Especially when you don’t know the industry’s ins and outs, so, let’s take a look at the digital marketing industry to understand how it impacts your business goals.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is a marketing tactic specifically designed around online strategies like social media, paid search, email marketing, and more.
Almost all companies use some aspect of digital marketing in their business strategy now. It helps to get your message in front of a wide audience for a lot less money than traditional marketing.
Why does it work so well? You can find your audience right where they already are by analyzing data and analytics. Whether they’re scrolling through Instagram or posting videos to TikTok, you know their location, age, and interests.
What Does A Great Strategy Entail?
There is so much that goes into digital marketing that it can feel impossible to get a handle on it all. But here’s how to put it into the context of your life.
Say you go to a website to shop for shoes. While you’re there, you’re offered a 10% discount if you sign up with your email address. When you sign-up, the company emails you the discount, and you buy the shoes you’ve been eyeing.
After that, you see their promotions and deals popping up in your inbox and ads on your Facebook page. Maybe sometimes you even click into an email and buy a new pair of shoes.
That is a form of digital marketing. You’ve just been hit with a few different types of strategies, including:
- Email Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Remarketing
- Paid Advertising
How does it benefit your business?
Now that you have an idea of everything that goes into digital marketing, maybe you’re wondering how it benefits your business.
Small businesses don’t always have the budget or capacity to tackle traditional marketing. But with digital marketing, you can tie a few things together and market to a specific demographic that’s interested in your products or services.
Having a strategy in place can help you:
- Create awareness of your brand
- Engage with your audience
- Convert passive visitors into active buyers
- Build loyalty with your followers and customers
- Get your brand in front of new people.
To make this successful, you have to understand how the strategies work together. You can do that on your own or hire a digital marketing agency to help you.
How your small business can get ready for digital innovation
If you have the time to invest and the ability to learn, or if you already know digital marketing, it’s perfectly fine to do it on your own.
However, for many small businesses, it’s easier to hire an agency at first. They can get to the heart of your ROIs and come up with a strategy you can afford. They’ll walk you through the process and help educate you at the same time. This is a great way to get started until you feel confident in doing it on your own.